


Apartment Story

by torntopisces



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29949207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torntopisces/pseuds/torntopisces
Summary: After drifting apart for several years while struggling through their early twenties, Bokuto and Akaashi reunite after the Black Jackals vs Adlers match in Sendai. Both harboring unresolved and uncertain feelings for one another, they decide to do the adult thing about it, and move in together.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Apartment Story

**Author's Note:**

> If I finish writing this, it'll be my first time finishing a long piece of writing in years, so I'm sharing it to give myself motivation and a schedule. Large parts are already written, so I'm shooting for weekly. Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Mostly canon compliant, with one major mistake - I wrote the first 40% or so thinking for some reason that MSBY is Tokyo-based, rather than Osaka. No idea why, but without that being true the premise doesn't make much sense, so please forgive this error. 
> 
> Content and spoilers - contains manga spoilers through the end of the series, and casual conversations about sex/sexuality and mental health issues throughout, as well as frequent references to drinking alcohol and making and eating food. If any of these are triggers, please read with caution! There may be more explicit sexual content later, but I haven't made up my mind yet. I'll warn and potentially change the rating if and when it's necessary.

Bokuto first wondered whether the reporter played volleyball. He had the height for it and, as far as Bokuto could tell, the build - broad-shouldered and lean, with long legs, and a solid waist and thighs that spoke to hidden muscle. Bokuto’s second thought was to wonder whether the guy was single. MSBY Black Jackals had just defeated longtime rivals Schweiden Adlers in their first game of the regular season, and no one in the world was out of Bokuto’s league. Riding that high of victory, still flush with adrenaline and unspent potential, nothing seemed impossible to Bokuto, not even talking up beautiful, bookish guys of the type that typically intimidated him. He didn’t want to blow off Akaashi - he’d been looking forward to seeing Akaashi ever since they set aside time for their interview - but if he could quickly get the well-built, beautiful, potentially-volleyball-playing reporter’s number, that would leave him all evening to come up with good pickup lines. Later that night, when Akaashi got tired of him, Bokuto could text this reporter and ask if he wanted to meet up for a _private interview_. He was mentally workshopping a second innuendo involving _investigative reporting_ when the reporter caught his eye and waved, and he realized that the reporter was Akaashi.

Bokuto tilted his head in confusion. The world tilted with him. He blinked, and its axis realigned. Then everything got back to normal, and Bokuto laughed and ran over and pulled Akaashi off his feet into a great swinging embrace, and they fell easily into talking, almost like no time had passed. It was just Akaashi, after all.

“You’re really gonna stay, though, right?” Escorting them after the interview back to the auditorium proper, Bokuto stopped their little group by a broad bank of windows, to make his case. He’d already made Akaashi promise three times to stay for the celebratory dinner; still, he didn’t feel sure. “Most of the guys from Fukurodani got together to watch back home, but you gotta come say hi to Shouyou! And Tetsu’s around somewhere, and Tsumu and Myaa-sam and we’re gonna kidnap as many Adlers as we can, make ‘em do rounds with us - and hey, I heard somebody say Tsukki’s here too, remember Tsukishima Kei? He’s still an asshole! Lots of guys from Karasuno are, actually - are here, I mean, not assholes! Ha! Anyway, we’re grabbing them all. Kokubuncho pub crawl slash victory celebration slash badass unplanned monster generation high school VBC reunion extravaganza!” He accompanied each word with a dramatic martial gesture before posing with one fist outstretched, picturing the phrase projected behind him in a title card, bold black and gold kanji slicing across the pale autumn sky. “But it won’t be awesome unless you come! Say you’re gonna stay, alright?”

“That was my intent,” Akaashi said, sounding as though he was reminding himself. He shrugged the straps of his backpack in a manner that called attention to them. “I planned on it.”

“Aw, yeah!” Bokuto shouted and leapt, pumping his fist in the air. Even in the crowded space his cheer echoed, the cavernous windows returning the sound as though the pretty cold sky were cheering back at him. “You still think of everything, Akaashi! Got snacks? Change of underwear? A toothbrush? You know, back in high school we did all these training camps,” he added as an aside to Akaashi’s friend, this cheerful, tired-looking Udai-san, who had a bright intensity to him despite the circles under his eyes, his gaze like the flash of a camera. Bokuto was pretty sure he liked him. “You played volleyball, yeah? You remember camp? Yeah, I dunno, I can just tell! Anyway, all those camps and Akaashi only forgot to bring a toothbrush _one time_. I think I forgot _every_ time!”

“I never forgot my toothbrush,” Akaashi stated. “There was only the one time I forgot to bring an extra for you.”

“That’s still a toothbrush you forgot to bring, isn’t it?” Bokuto said, and laughed loudly at Akaashi’s expression. “Though hey, if you did bring something to eat, I wouldn’t say no.”

Akaashi’s expression deepened. “Didn’t your managers provide you with something for cooldown? And you’re going to dinner right after.”

Even as he spoke, he slung one strap off his shoulder and unzipped his trim little overnight bag, and before Bokuto could even summon his best _but Akaa-aashi_ , there was a protein bar in his hands.

There was definitely something about him, though. At first Bokuto thought it was only that they’d gone so long without seeing each other. They were busy guys; Akaashi had an important job publishing magazines and interviewing top volleyball aces, and Bokuto had the Olympics ahead of him. As he’d told Akaashi all about it, gratified by his attentive questions and the ceaseless scratching of his pen, the other half of Bokuto’s mind wandered. He kept wondering whether Akaashi had changed his look or something. Put on weight, maybe? Gotten taller? Grown out his hair a bit, so the slight curl to it became a wave instead of sticking out at odd ends, the way it used to. Bokuto always wanted to pull those stick-out little curls. Their absence distracted him. Maybe a part of him would always expect the perpetually tired-eyed and serious sixteen-year-old he’d known best.

And, too, he’d only half-believed Akaashi would be here, even with the interview they’d planned. It seemed just as likely that some important issue requiring Akaashi’s attention would come up again at the last second. Lately, Akaashi had been getting harder and harder to pin down. In person he was much the same - quiet, dry, politely contrary - but he forever now had one foot out the door. Always checking his watch, waiting on a train, offering perfectly reasonable excuses why he couldn’t stay. Bokuto looked away for half a second five years ago and when he looked back, found he no longer held the center of Akaashi’s attention. Now that he had this chance to grab hold of it again, he wasn’t going to let go.

While they were talking, Akaashi kept shifting his weight, glancing around at the thinning crowds in a way that spoke to his performing unknowable mental calculations. Then, at a break in Tenma’s exchanging contact information with Bokuto, he said, “As much as I enjoyed seeing you again, if Udai-san intends to return to work, I think I’d better accompany him.”

Bokuto anticipated this. It stung, but it ignited something in him - the feeling of a challenge.

“Akaashi, you can’t leave!” he cried, grabbing Akaashi by the shoulders. “Loyalty to your work is one thing, but what about your loyalty to me? Your best friend and personal hero? Your favorite senpai! You promised me you’d come! You can’t break a promise!”

“I didn’t promise anything.” Akaashi seemed startled. He leaned back, maintaining some distance between them. “I only said that it had been my intent.”

“Don’t leave early on my account,” Tenma said, his voice full of suppressed laughter. Bokuto’s newest friend had his back; his heart swelled with affection, and he’d have pulled Tenma into a crushing hug if he hadn’t been holding Akaashi in place with both hands. “Don’t you want to catch up with Bokuto-san? You seemed so excited to see him.”

“To see the match,” Akaashi corrected, now glaring at Tenma from the corner of his eye. If he turned to glare at him directly, his nose would’ve brushed Bokuto’s.

“You were so excited to see me, Akaashi!” Bokuto yelled. “We haven’t seen each other in years, it’s been literal years!”

“I saw you only a few weeks ago, at the National Championship quarterfinals.” He still looked askance, even as he addressed him.

“That was _months_ ago! Literally, that was almost five whole months ago, that’s almost half a year, Akaashi, it’s basically the same thing! And we barely got to talk then, either, so it doesn’t even count. You ditched me right away that time, too. We only got to see each other for like, barely two minutes today!”

“It was more like twenty,” Akaashi said, but he sounded like he was wavering. Bokuto pressed his advantage, and Akaashi took a stumbling half-step backward in retreat.

“Two, twenty, whatever! Not enough time! Two _hours_ wouldn’t be enough time, we haven’t talked in forever! Nope, you can’t go back to Tokyo tonight, it’s just no good. You gotta buy me five drinks and congratulate me on my great game and say all the plays I made that you thought were most amazing and rank them all in order. Sorry, Udai-san,” he added as an aside, “but I called dibs. Akaashi’s mine tonight.”

“Please,” Tenma said, holding up his hands, “he’s all yours. Hey, look at it this way,” to Akaashi, whose eyes narrowed in betrayal, “there’s nothing for you to do tonight, anyway. I probably won’t start in on the script until tomorrow morning. On the train I’m just going to be sketching a bit, doing some ideating - the last thing I want is some nosy editor frowning over my shoulder.”

“He’s ideating, Akaashi,” Bokuto agreed, “leave the man alone.”

Akaashi frowned once more at Tenma and said, “Alright, alright. I can tell when I’m unwanted.”

He said it in his dry, humorous way, that sounded mad but was really just a joke - but by the time Bokuto caught onto that nuance he was already shouting, “I want you, Akaashi!” Akaashi finally looked directly at him, as did pretty much everyone nearby. “You’re wanted here! You’re wanted by me, and all the guys from high school you never get to see anymore, and everybody on the team you still need to meet, and most importantly, by me! I want you to come have fun with me, Akaashi, come on, you’re wanted, I want you to come!”

Akaashi blinked once, slowly, and said, “Well.”

“Go have your scheduled fun time,” Tenma laughed, and patted Akaashi’s back as he left. “Or you’ll have to mark yourself absent and make up your lost hours on the weekend.”

Akaashi half-turned to watch him go. He looked a little lost, the way you might watch your only friend disappear into an unfamiliar crowd. But that didn’t make any sense - Bokuto was right there. Akaashi had him, even if half his attention was now on wondering whether it was worth trying to sneak Akaashi into the locker room, so he could keep an eye on him during postgame analysis.

“Really stay, though,” Bokuto said, distracted. Could he grab a spare uniform and make it back out without being spotted? Probably not. Coach hadn’t been too impressed by that maneuver the last time he’d tried it. “Ok? Really don’t go. I gotta do post, and change and stuff, and probably shower - do I smell?” He sniffed an armpit experimentally before holding it out towards Akaashi. “Smell me.”

Akaashi declined to smell him. “I said I would stay. I’m here, aren’t I?” And he was - that was true, he was - but he still had that tense, watch-checking energy, like only part of him was really there, and another part was walking quickly through the thinning crowd, hurrying to catch the train that would take him away from Bokuto and make him a stranger again.

“Akaashi,” Bokuto said solemnly, and grabbed both of Akaashi’s hands in his, deciding it was time to stop feinting and go in for the kill. “This is real important to me, ok?” He ducked his head to look up at him, eyes round and big, gripping his hands tightly - a half-pouting, half-pleading look that he recalled Akaashi being uncommonly vulnerable to in high school. “You gotta promise you’ll stay. Promise I’m not gonna get a text halfway through post about how you had to go back to Tokyo cause your neighbor didn’t know they were supposed to clear out the lint trap and the laundry room caught fire and smoked out the whole apartment complex.”

“Obviously I can’t promise that,” Akaashi said, frowning. “Are you supposed to be in a meeting right now? Am I keeping you?”

“Promise,” Bokuto insisted, even as Akaashi took him by the shoulders and turned him, steering him with firm hands on his upper back towards the locker rooms. “You gotta promise me or I’m not going.”

“That’s - fine, alright. I promise I’ll stay.” Akaashi stopped just shy of the Staff Only doors. He looked annoyed, but finally fully present. “Now go, hurry, you’re probably already late. Go on.”

Bokuto beamed at him, and then on impulse leaned in and hugged him again - not the showy, spinning and back-slapping hug he’d greeted him with, but a tight, close hold. Akaashi gave a muffled little ‘hmph’ as Bokuto lifted him slightly, his heels only leaving the scuffed gym linoleum by a few centimeters; and that was surprising, too, not in the way that made him seem like a sad stranger, but in a way that was honestly kind of cute.

As Bokuto set him back down, all of the day’s elation returned to him as a burst of exuberant haste, and he sprinted towards his team, leaving the double doors swinging behind him. He’d played one of the best games of his career, he’d made a new friend, and now Akaashi was staying for dinner. So far this evening, he was 3-0.

Bokuto packed his night off with goals. After post came wrangling everybody he was hyped on seeing into roughly the same area of Kokubuncho. To this end, he invited everyone he could get his hands on to his team’s celebratory dinner, including most of the losing team. They weren’t really meant to be drinking, he and his fellow athletes, especially now that the season had started; Bokuto worried briefly that a pub crawl might be a tough sell. But everyone seemed to share the festive mood, even the Adlers - it was a good fucking match - and this shared enthusiasm carried them all along from food stall to izakaya to little restaurant, led by the sound of Hinata’s irrepressible laughter.

As a flight risk, Bokuto kept ahold of Akaashi as much as possible. He spent the evening hanging around his shoulders, towing him by his coat sleeve, keeping one hand hooked through the crook of his elbow as he might grasp a handle on a crowded train. There was nothing stopping Akaashi from diving into the nearest unoccupied taxi at any moment apart from Bokuto’s strong arm around his waist, so Bokuto kept it there - kept him close. He just felt safer that way.

Their conversations were fragmented, spread out across the night. Bokuto used many of these short opportunities to review the match with him, to affirm that Akaashi had seen his beam weapon attack, to ask whether he’d joined in the Bokuto chants. He recreated a few choice plays for Akaashi, to make sure he really understood them. He went over the answers he’d given during their interview again, to make sure Akaashi really remembered.

It wasn’t like he was totally self-absorbed or anything. He’d actually been working really hard on that, lately - asking about other people, instead of only talking about himself. He spent a satisfying short walk from one bar to another rambling about his learning process - times he’d caught himself doing it, funny times he’d forgotten - with Akaashi tucked securely under one arm, with their friends surrounding them, with the sunset just low enough that the neons really came into their brightness, an artificial moonrise. He was in such a good mood that he didn’t even hold it against himself when he realized, after they’d already been seated in the next place and nearly finished their otoshi, that he hadn’t yet asked Akaashi a single question.

“Buuuut what about you, though?” he added casually, in the middle of an anecdote about how he and Hinata spent a TV spot’s entire runtime trying to recreate their spiking sound effects. “Make any killer plays lately? I guess you don’t get kills as much, but a setter dump has a totally different sound anyway - would you say it’s more of a ‘pah-ponk’ or a ‘pah-paow’?”

Akaashi blinked at him briefly, chopsticks suspended halfway to his mouth. “Oh - actually, I haven’t played since graduating from university.” He delivered this terrible statement without much emotion. “Alumni were welcome in theory, but the club seemed to be mainly for students.”

“Wha - but - you - Akaashi!” Bokuto rarely found himself speechless, but he was blindsided by this tragedy. “You haven’t - like, not at _all_? Not even just, with your friends, or, or - what about neighborhood groups? Private gym clubs? You’re such a good player! You could probably even get on a municipal team!”

“I _was_ good, in high school. I’m pretty out of practice. I doubt I could qualify any longer.” Akaashi’s words cut through him, even as Akaashi kept on studying the menu and eating pickled cabbage like it was nothing. “With work and all, I just haven’t had the time.”

“No time for volleyball?” Bokuto echoed, his voice small.

“I’ve been very busy,” Akaashi said, eyes briefly meeting Bokuto’s before flicking back to the menu.

Then it was their turn to order, and Bokuto was distracted with obtaining competitive quantities of liquor.

Later, at a different bar, after soundly losing a chugging contest to Tanaka Saeko, he caught Akaashi watching him. Akaashi had one hand over his mouth and was looking at Bokuto with either reproach or affection, which on Akaashi were quite similar expressions. Bokuto chose to believe in the latter.

“What are you so busy with anyway, huh?” There were empty seats across from Akaashi, but Bokuto slung himself into the booth beside him. Their legs and arms jostled, digging into one another before fitting together, surprisingly comfortable. “Mr. Doesn’t Have Time for Volleyball.”

“I knew I hadn’t heard the end of that.” Akaashi still had his hand over his mouth, but Bokuto was almost certain now that he was concealing a smile. There was a warm crease at the corner of his eye. “Work, mostly. The company that hosted my internship offered me a more permanent position after graduation.”

Bokuto waved this away, impatient. “Work, work, work. You gotta balance your job with the rest of your life, Akaashi, it’s totally not healthy to work too hard! I work hard too, but I still make sure to leave plenty of time for volleyball.”

“You play volleyball professionally. It is your work.”

“I play it for fun, too! And I always make time for both. That’s called work-life balance.”

“I see.” When Akaashi moved to accept a beer being handed him, Bokuto actually caught a glimpse of his smile - a tiny, genuine flash of teeth - before he pressed his lips into a funny little line to hide it. “Well, you’re not entirely wrong, if I’m honest. I’ve been failing to find that balance, lately. The new position comes with a lot of responsibility, and I’m by far the youngest member of the editorial staff - I guess I wanted to prove they’d chosen wisely. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.”

“I guess.” Bokuto empathized, begrudgingly. “It can be rough, sometimes, being the new guy on the team. But - volleyball, Akaashi?”

Akaashi tilted his head. “Is it really so surprising?”

“Yes! Akaashi, that sucks! Ok, so, you have to make sacrifices sometimes, but you should never give up on your passion!”

“My passion? I never intended to pursue professional play.” His face returned to its polite neutrality; the warmth of his little not-smile was gone. “I enjoyed my time with volleyball, but I wouldn’t say I was particularly passionate about it.”

Then their table was joined by more of their group, and someone handed Bokuto another beer, and he was once more distracted.

It wasn’t like Akaashi was hating it. Even when he wasn’t talking to Bokuto, he wasn’t always just eating in silence or staring at his phone or something. He kept making Tsukishima laugh, for instance, with quiet comments that the rest of them missed. It wasn’t even Tsukki’s mean laugh, either - the way he laughed when he blocked you, or you said a word wrong, or tried to do a cool flip and fell on your ass - but a muffled and conspiratorial snicker that Bokuto rarely heard from him.

Akaashi also spent the better part of an hour with Kuroo, slowly killing an assortment of sashimi large enough to feed several additional people, complaining together about social media promotions. Bokuto paid them almost no attention, apart from helpfully interjecting that it was really easy to get thousands of followers, actually, and that people mostly liked workout pics, especially if they were shirtless. That made Kuroo throw back his head in laughter and Akaashi cover his mouth with both hands, and Bokuto left them to their otherwise boring conversation with a stolen mouthful of bluefin, feeling accomplished.

And of course, Akaashi shone around Hinata, as pretty much everyone did. The moment he saw him, Hinata shouted out a bright excited “Akaashi-san!” and then slammed bodily into him, a move somewhere between a hug and a flying tackle. If they hadn’t been supported by Bokuto, who had tackle-hugged Akaashi just moments prior, Hinata would’ve knocked them both flat.

There was just something off about him. Distant. Bokuto kept finding his eye drawn to Akaashi, searching for him in the crowd, to make sure he hadn’t disappeared. And when he did find him - it wasn’t like Akaashi was hating it - but it didn’t always look like he was having the greatest time. Sometimes he’d be talking, but just as often, Bokuto would find him sitting quietly to one side, looking absently through a window, or at a group of people nearby, or down at his hands. If Bokuto dragged him into a conversation, he would maintain it. Otherwise, he stayed on the outside, looking in.

Bokuto spent most of the evening bouncing from table to table. He had to catch up with everybody, make sure they were all having a good time, taste all the dishes they’d ordered to make sure they were quality. Now, anchored somewhat by all the food he’d eaten, he felt gladder than ever that Akaashi was there. Just as he began to search the crowd again for Akaashi, Akaashi appeared, handing him the down jacket he’d almost left abandoned beneath a table. At that same moment, a chilly tendril reached them from the open restaurant door - and that felt right, felt natural. Bokuto realized he must’ve been missing Akaashi something fierce, in those months and years he’d barely seen him. Akaashi had always found his lost coats. It never would’ve occurred to Bokuto to be grateful for that, before.

“I got quite the scolding from Hinata-kun,” Akaashi said, holding Bokuto’s coat open towards him, so he could shrug back into it. This pleased Bokuto a great deal. He felt like an actor or an idol being helped into a dressing gown, or a very fancy lady trying on stoles. “And I was made to promise that I’d try to find a neighborhood team, so you can rest assured.”

“For real? Hell yeah!” Despite the higher than average number of dinners he’d eaten, Bokuto felt newly energized. He leapt into the air as they exited the restaurant, high enough to slap a triumphant high-five against the building’s lowermost sign. “Akaashi, that’s awesome!”

Akaashi gave a quiet chuckle, almost lost in the general din of their group spilling out into the night. “I guess I should be flattered that two of the nation’s best players are so invested in my nonexistent volleyball career, even if I don’t understand it.”

“What’s not to understand? What I don’t understand, what really doesn’t make any sense to me, Akaashi, is how you could just give up on it in the first place. That’s so wrong!” Akaashi stopped him abruptly with a hand across his chest, just as the walk light changed. Bokuto grabbed his arm and used it to pull him in, wrapping around him, swaying them back and forth as they waited. “What happened to you, man?” he asked, suddenly feeling very plaintive. “Since when do you give up on stuff?”

Akaashi said something, facing away from him towards the traffic, that Bokuto couldn’t hear. He made a warm, familiar weight in Bokuto’s arms, comfortingly solid.

“What was that? Talk louder.”

“I didn’t give up on it,” Akaashi repeated, stepping out of his embrace. He half-turned towards Bokuto, to be better heard, but didn’t exactly look at him, still blankly watching the racing cars. “It wasn’t intentional. It just sort of happened.”

“Akaashi! That’s the same thing as giving up!”

“It’s our turn to cross,” Akaashi said, and stepped out into the street even as the light was just changing. Bokuto grabbed after him instinctively, but the traffic all stopped as expected, so he only stumbled hurriedly along in Akaashi’s wake.

“But, Akaashi -”

“I didn’t give up,” Akaashi said again, still walking slightly ahead of him. “It’s not the same.”

While Bokuto was considering how best to argue, Kuroo called over to him, wanting him to settle some other argument. Pulled into a different conversation, he forgot to respond.

Akaashi didn’t forget. After they settled in front of their next courses, he said out of nowhere to Bokuto, “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something but found yourself completely unable to do it? Not having enough time, or motivation, or…” He took in Bokuto’s helpless expression and trailed off. Then it occurred to him to add, “Ah, of course - I mean, something unrelated to volleyball.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah, totally! Totally, all the time! That makes way more sense. Man, I’m always putting other stuff off. I’d even put off procrastinating if I could!” Bokuto laughed at his joke, then repeated it under his breath, for later reuse. “Put off procrastinating. Yeah, I get you. Like oh man, I tell you, I’ve been meaning to move apartments for years now, literal _years_. Why do they make it so damn complicated? First you gotta go look at the new place, but it has to be at the right time, or everybody gets all uptight with you - I get up at five, Akaashi, I gotta know what the neighborhood’s gonna look like in the morning! - and then it’s too far away, or crazy expensive, or the guy downstairs vapes so much it comes up through the vents and looks like a ghost and you scream in front of the landlady, and you gotta start all over again!”

“Actually, I can relate, sort of,” Akaashi said, and graced him with a little smile. “I’ve been apartment hunting recently, too.”

“That’s wild, dude! What a pain in the ass, huh? Makes you wanna say hey, this place isn’t so bad after all, I’m staying put - but then the heat’s still busted even though you keep complaining, and you’re not allowed to make friends with the stray cats and seeing them gets you all depressed all the time, and the couple upstairs keeps fighting, and you’re like, gah, this place is driving me crazy!”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Akaashi did look genuinely sorry, focused entirely on Bokuto’s complaints, not half-listening or nodding along or waiting for him to stop talking. Bokuto really had missed that, now that he noticed it. “It’s an understandable mindset to be stuck in. It’s certainly easier to stay where you are, even if it isn’t best. I suppose I’m fortunate that there’s nothing really wrong with my current apartment, apart from that I can’t afford it any longer.”

“Did they make it more expensive or something? Didn’t you say you just got promoted, too? That’s so wrong, Akaashi.” Full of beneficent goodwill on this excellent day, Bokuto put his hand over Akaashi’s, clasping it warmly. “You can always come sleep on a futon at my place. I’d take the futon, but getting a full eight hours of high quality rest is really important for an athlete, actually, and I’m not supposed to mess with my sleep routine.”

“That’s - very generous of you,” Akaashi said with another little grin, though this one was half-hidden beneath his free hand. “But it shouldn’t be necessary. I’m not priced out of it completely, just paying more than I’d like. That’s why looking for a new one keeps dragging on.”

“They got you with those secret prices too, huh?” Bokuto ran a sympathetic thumb over the back of Akaashi’s hand. His hand was warm, soft, surprisingly pleasant to hold. When Akaashi only blinked in confusion, he added, “You know, when they say the rent’s gonna be one thing but then you move in and they add a bunch of other costs to it in separate bills, like they think you’re not gonna notice - it’s always the dumbest excuses, too, like, you think I’m gonna believe I’m paying for _water_?” Bokuto tipped his head back and laughed; that one still got him every month. “Water’s free, dude! It comes right out of the tap!”

“Ah,” Akaashi said, still blinking. “No, that - wasn’t it. It’s just that I shared it with a partner. He chose to break his lease and move out after our relationship ended, so I became responsible for the full cost.”

“Oh,” Bokuto said, and felt his laughter fade. He tried to think of something funny to say about that, but there wasn’t anything, really. He took his hand off Akaashi’s. “I get it.”

Akaashi hummed in acknowledgment, and they both found new interest in their sakana.

Time passed in its subtle, unseen way, and before Bokuto realized, it was late. Their party slipped away in twos and threes, sometimes with hugs and laughter and promises to meet, sometimes without Bokuto noticing. The bar seating emptied enough that its neon beer signs subtly changed the mood of the dimly lit room every time they flashed. Everything would one moment be warm and rosy, then golden and full of promise, then a lonely blue.

The livelier remnants of their party sat around the bar - Kuroo laughingly engaged in some argument with both Tanaka siblings, Tsukishima hemmed in on all sides by his smaller and nicer friends - Shouyou blocked from sight behind Tsukki but cleanly audible over the low murmur and clatter of the late night izakaya, shy freckled Tadashi poking teasing fingers into Tsukki’s ribs, little blonde Yacchan pink-cheeked with drink and giggling. Beside them, Kageyama had his face pressed flat on the counter, unconscious.

Akaashi watched them through heavy-lidded eyes. Something kept drawing Bokuto’s eye back to him. A mostly-full beer sat in front of him, and he ran one graceful finger slowly around its rim, over and over. Bokuto remembered his earlier impression of Akaashi as a handsome stranger, someone out of his league - but that was silly. No one was out of Bokuto’s league. And anyway, it wasn’t like Akaashi was intimidating. He was just Akaashi.

“You were too, passionate,” Bokuto said. “Were too.”

“Hmm?” Akaashi said.

“Passionate. About volleyball. You loved volleyball.”

“Did I?” Akaashi still watched the group at the bar instead of paying attention to him. “You’re telling me this?”

“Yeah? I just told you. You listening to me, Akaashi?” Bokuto waved to catch his eye, and Akaashi finally turned his serious gaze on him completely. “There you are. Anyway, it doesn’t make sense to say you weren’t passionate. Obviously you were. You were the only one who ever sorta kept up with me, you know? So you had to love it at least half as much as I did. Which means you loved it a whole lot, see?”

Akaashi considered this evidence quietly. Bokuto expected him to pronounce it irrefutable, but instead after a short silence he said, “There was more to what I liked about it than playing in matches.”

“What, like playing practice matches?” Akaashi’s expression suggested that he did not mean playing practice matches. “Solo practice? Doing drills? Endurance training?”

“There was a social element to it,” Akaashi said, choosing his words, “that I’ve never been able to find with another team.”

“Oh… Oh! Oh, duh!” Bokuto smacked his forehead, laughing at himself for missing the obvious. “You liked playing with me! Of course it wasn’t the same without me there! Pretty sure everybody I play with feels that way, dude, but I can’t be everywhere at once, you know? That’s no reason to quit. You gotta stay sharp for when we can play together again!”

Akaashi looked unimpressed with his deduction. “It wasn’t all about you,” he said coolly, gaze sliding back to the bar. “But yes, before you complain, you were part of it. I think I just came to enjoy being on the team more than the sport itself. That team, in particular.”

“It was a great team,” Bokuto agreed. Easily one of the best he’d ever been on, even still, having been on many worse teams full of better players. “Yeah, Fukurodani VBC was something special. But you could help make something special again, with other people!”

“No, actually,” Akaashi said softly. He was still looking at the bar, but didn’t seem to be watching their friends so much as looking away from Bokuto. “No, as it turns out, I couldn’t.”

They sat for a moment without speaking, surrounded by the general din of people laughing and eating and having conversations that didn't involve them. Bokuto didn’t know what to say to that. Akaashi sounded so sure, so final - the way you might talk about a game you’d just lost, heavy with the knowledge that your best hadn’t been good enough.

“You look really sad,” Bokuto said, finally. He wanted to lean his head against Akaashi’s, but they were sitting across from each other at an otherwise empty little table, which wobbled uncertainly as Bokuto leaned forward. He tried resting his head on his hands, but it just wasn’t the same. “Does your stomach hurt? You shouldn’t have ordered all that fried chicken.”

Akaashi’s eyes flicked to him. “I wouldn’t have kept ordering it if you hadn’t kept eating it all. Does your stomach hurt?”

“Yeah,” Bokuto admitted, sadly. His head felt so heavy; holding it up took so much effort, even with both hands. Akaashi would’ve been better support, but he was all the way across the table. For a moment Bokuto forgot all about the day’s excellence and moped. The sad blue light kept flashing on, and the evening crowd kept thinning, their chairs and cushions left pushed out at odd angles, tables littered with dishes and crumbs and empty bottles, and Akaashi was distant from him even though he was right there, close enough that their knees kept touching.

“Your rebound was my favorite.”

“Huh?” Bokuto said, lifting his head up.

“Of your plays today. My favorite. I liked the rebound.” Behind them, the warm yellow lights flicked on again, painting Akaashi in gold.

Bokuto marveled at him a moment longer. Then he felt himself beginning to grin, as all the excellence of the day flooded back to him. He remembered that play - how effortless his years’ worth of effort had felt as it culminated, popping lightly off his fingertips - the baffled rage of the blockers, Hinata’s bracing presence behind him readying the reset, the pure joy of connectivity. Suddenly the abandoned feeling of the late night izakaya became instead a sleepy sense of satisfaction. He beamed at Akaashi, replete.

“Oh, hey, thanks! Yeah, that was a great play. Totally great. What about it, though,” he added, ever hungry for more of that feeling, “what did you like about it, what made it good?”

“I’ve always admired that play. Rebounds, I mean. In general.” Akaashi cleared his throat. “The concept is simple yet elegant and effective, and performing them well shows a great deal of skill. Your feint was very good too, for the same reasons. And of course way you place your shots is always impressive. It’s, well.”

“It’s what? Tell me!” Akaashi sounded like he was holding something back. He addressed these compliments over Bokuto’s shoulder, not meeting his eye directly. Bokuto grabbed both his hands and shook them up and down, to help him focus. “Tell me, tell me!”

“It’s,” he started, then sighed, and spoke to a point slightly above the gelled peaks of Bokuto’s hair, “that, um. Your strength is impressive enough on its own, but the level of control you demonstrate over it is - it’s truly exceptional.”

“Wow,” Bokuto breathed. Warmth unfurled within him. He felt his face heat, and his heart beat quickly, even though he didn’t feel at all embarrassed. “Yeah. Yeah it is. I _am_ pretty exceptional, Akaashi, thanks for noticing,” he said, and recovered himself enough to toss his head back with a laugh. A thought occurred to him as he watched Akaashi hide his little smile behind the rim of his glass. “The rebound was your favorite though, huh? More than the dink or the tight cross? Bet it’s cause you taught it to me, right?”

He accompanied this question with finger guns. When Akaashi opened his mouth to respond but instead stayed silent for a moment, Bokuto knew that he’d hit his mark precisely, and waggled his finger guns up and down in triumph. That little beat of silence always meant his being right had caught Akaashi off-guard.

“Gotcha! Bullseye!”

“Hardly,” Akaashi said, the severity in his tone undercut by the fact that he’d begun to blush. Bokuto had all but forgotten how his face flushed - how he first went red along the lines of his cheekbones, then up into his forehead. “I mean, it’s hardly true that I taught you, I wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to -”

He kept speaking, but Bokuto cut him off, too thrilled that he remembered something Akaashi had forgotten to wait. “You did, Akaashi, you totally did! I saw you try and use one and you got roofed hardcore by this huge triple block from - ah, shit - it was a practice match, and you were still backup setter, so it must’ve been - uh -”

“Kawahori High School,” Akaashi supplied, quietly.

Bokuto snapped his fingers, remembering. “Kawahori! That was it!” Then he shook his fist at the sky and added, “Kawahori, my first great nemesis! And you helped me defeat them with the power of the rebound!”

“Hardly,” Akaashi said again, but with less insistence. He’d covered his mouth and ducked his head, but it was still clear that he was smiling. “I only happened to be the first to show you the move. You taught it to yourself. If you hadn’t seen it from me, you’d have picked it up from someone else, eventually.”

It was such an odd thing to say that Bokuto had to laugh. “Uh, yeah, but I didn’t see it from anybody else, I saw it from you. And you did too teach me, we stayed after practice that night and you showed me how it worked.”

“We stayed after practice every night,” Akaashi said, which was true, but seemed another odd thing to say, especially the way Akaashi said it - full of an emotion too complex for Bokuto to place.

“Well, yeah,” he said slowly, trying to at least match the seriousness of Akaashi’s tone, even if he couldn’t figure out what he was getting at. “You taught me a lot of stuff, dude.”

“That’s not true. I mean,” hurrying to add as Bokuto bristled reflexively, “it’s not a lie, I just don’t know that it’s accurate. I can’t take credit for that.”

“Well, not all the credit. I get most of it, obvs. But you get like a, what’s it called. Honorary mention. For caring almost as much as I did.” Bokuto settled back into his chair, slouching low so he could nudge his knee pointedly against Akaashi’s. “That’s why I don’t get it. How you could give it up like that.”

“I didn’t _give up_ ,” Akaashi once again insisted. “It’s different. I don’t -”

“Have the time,” Bokuto finished for him, sighing. “But that doesn’t make any sense either. If you don’t have time for volleyball, how can you still come see my matches?”

“That’s a completely false equivalent. Watching a few professional matches here and there is hardly the same as committing to a team. And anyway -” He cut himself off abruptly, looking off across the room. When Bokuto made a curious noise and nudged him again, he sighed and admitted, “Well, I like watching your matches better than I like playing volleyball.”

“Oh,” Bokuto said. What that made him feel was far too complicated for the hour and the number of drinks he’d had. “You still miss it though, don’t you? You miss playing together, right?”

“You and I, playing together? That’s not really the same as playing volleyball in general. I mean, I’ve played with other people, since.”

“But you still miss it, right?” Knocking their knees together insistently, starting to get a little nervous. “Playing with me?”

Akaashi looked at him again, and his expression was oddly helpless. “Of course I do.”

“We still get together sometimes, you know,” Bokuto said, and slumped further, hiding somewhat behind his half-empty beer glass. “Fukurodani. All the guys. Yukie and Suzu. Saru has this friend who manages a gym, she’s really cool, she lets us stay late if we want to, and - and we go out after, like this -” He gestured around, encompassing the fun night they’d had. Sadness kept trying to creep back up on him. “Like, I wanna believe you, but that just doesn’t make any sense to me. We all get together and play, and I always, always ask you. But you never come.”

“I can’t,” Akaashi said, quietly.

“You’re too busy,” Bokuto said, and tilted his beer back and forth to watch the foam make lacey patterns on the glass, his sadness gaining ground. “Yeah. You said.”

“I’m not. Not always. I mean, that’s not always the case. Sometimes I just can’t.”

Bokuto squinted back up at him, trying to refocus. He thought of their earlier conversation, about how difficult it was to move - but that was different. That was putting off a chore. “I don’t get it,” he said, not without some regret. The familiar feeling that he was missing something obvious and important, something right in front of him, that everyone else could see.

“I don’t know how to explain. I even want to, at times - not just to play together, but - but then I don’t. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“That’s alright, Akaashi, take your time. Explaining things is tough. Believe me, I get that.”

Akaashi offered him a weak and fleeting little smile, then looked away. Bokuto followed his gaze, and watched Hinata leverage himself on Tsukishima’s shoulders for a freestanding vertical leap. The woman behind the grill said something to him, maybe in reproach, and Hinata said something back that made them both laugh, a bright clear sunburst of sound. Bokuto smiled involuntarily, watching them.

“I feel like I’ve been drifting,” Akaashi said. He spoke softly, barely audible, even in the little pocket of quiet that followed that happy noise. “Detached from everything, somehow. I feel like… I hope this isn’t too abstract. There’s just this image that keeps occurring to me. Like an astronaut on a spacewalk with a broken tether. Drifting away from everything, watching that last connection slip through my fingers. Grabbing at things to hold onto, only for them to float out of reach. I can only watch them get further away.”

“Why’s he floating away?” Bokuto said, trying hard to understand. The image upset him, like a scene from a horror movie. “I thought they stayed pretty close to the station. And they use more than one tether, I’m pretty sure, Akaashi. They’re pretty safe.”

“Maybe there was a - an accident. Some type of mistake that pushed him away.” Akaashi seemed unconvinced by his own explanation, and a moment later added, more softly, “Or maybe he was just careless. The sort that pushes things away by nature. Maybe he felt the other tethers would be too much trouble, and he could live without them, and that would be better for everyone.”

Bokuto considered this for a long moment, then said decisively, “That would be a pretty stupid thing for an astronaut to think.”

“Yes,” Akaashi agreed, quietly.

“I mean, that’s what they’re there for. That’s the whole point of a tether.”

“It isn’t a perfect metaphor.”

“Well, yeah, and like, there’s not really an astronaut who would do that, right? Astronauts are super smart, like you.”

Akaashi just tilted his head at this, face still slightly flushed and uncommonly open. He held his beer with fingertips braced around the rim, in a way that seemed both sharp and delicate. The curve of his hand made Bokuto think of a bird’s talon. The bright signs advertising beer behind the bar painted him red, then gold, then blue.

Bokuto did his best to really consider the image, closing his eyes against the flickering colors. He felt from the statement’s strange gravity that Akaashi had just told him something important, and he suspected more distantly that astronauts and their safety measures were not at the heart of it. He pictured it: the little white figure, the endless black emptiness, the fragile and unraveling cord.

“You’re lonely,” he said at last.

Akaashi looked back at him, surprised. While Bokuto was thinking, he’d turned back towards the counter, watching their friends with his cheek propped on one hand. Now that strange, open look was back. There was something vulnerable about the way his hand cupped his face, about how he set his beer down, untasted, upon a preexisting ring of condensation.

“Sometimes,” Akaashi said, after a moment. “It’s more complicated than that. But yes, sometimes I feel alone.”

“Move in with me.”

Bokuto heard himself say it, and knew that it was right. He hadn’t put any thought into the statement, hadn’t even known he was going to say it until he did, but he felt wholeheartedly that it was correct, undeniable, that it was exactly what he and Akaashi both needed.

“What?” Akaashi said. “No.”

“Aw, what! Come on, Akaashi, don’t say no without even thinking about it! You said you were thinking about moving, right? And I need a new place too, it’s perfect! I’d be a super awesome roommate,“ he said, shoving a thumb into his chest for emphasis, excitement building as the idea expanded before him. “I hardly ever eat food that’s labeled for other people anymore, and I’ve only forgotten to pay bills once or a couple times, and I’ve got this huge, like seriously huge, Akaashi, downloaded collection of volleyball tape on my tablet, and you can watch it any time, I don’t lock it - and,” catching up Akaashi’s hands from where they lay stunned on the table to transmit his excitement to him physically, “and I’ve got the best shower singing voice of anybody I know!”

“You’re drunk,” Akaashi said, faintly. His hands in Bokuto’s were almost feverishly warm.

“No, I’m serious! I got great breath control, and the acoustics really bring out my tone. It’s important to think about how somebody sings in the shower,” he explained sagely, reading mounting confusion on Akaashi’s face, “cause everybody does it, whether they admit it or not. It’s ok if yours sucks, though. My volume’s great too, I can just sing over you.” Akaashi opened his mouth, then closed it. “Plus you’d be living with a professional volleyball ace and future Olympic gold medalist, which would be pretty cool for you. You could tell people that and totally impress them. Wait, am I drunk?” Bokuto slapped at his own face a bit, checking. “Are you sure? I don’t think I feel drunk. I’m really not supposed to be - here, let me -”

Bokuto shook his head rapidly back and forth, to see if his vision would track.

“Bokuto-san.” Bokuto stopped shaking his head. A moment later, Akaashi swam back into focus, sharp brows drawn into a stern expression. He’d retrieved his hands while Bokuto focused on his sobriety tests, and had them pulled neatly, tightly together in front of him. “You shouldn’t make such a serious offer while you’re drinking. You’re - kind -” He faltered, and his fingers gripped together more tightly. “Someone might take advantage of that.”

“Kind,” Bokuto echoed, glowing. “Yeah, I am, aren’t I?”

“Please focus,” Akaashi said, sounding in phrase and tonality so exactly like his high school self that Bokuto instinctively swiveled his head about to look for starting position, expecting at any moment a whistle would blow. “I appreciate the thought, but of course I can’t accept. You need to make important life choices with a clear head.”

“I’m not drunk, Akaashi!” Akaashi glared. “Just a little, little, little bit tipsy.” Feeling that he’d lost some measure of persuasive power along with Akaashi’s hands, he reached for them again, but they were folded in a defensive posture. Bokuto left his hands cupped over Akaashi’s and slumped forward to rest on his forearms, head tilted to view Akaashi’s expression from below. From this angle, he looked less strict and more sad. “What if I asked again once I sobered up, which is gonna be any minute now, probably - what then?”

“Even if you hadn’t been drinking, it would still be an impulsive offer, made out of pity. I’d suggest you think it over for a while, at the very least.”

“Ehh? What pity?” Bokuto scrunched up his face in confusion. “It’s practical. I’m a really practical guy, you know. You can get a way bigger place with two people, and you only have to take out trash half the time. And sometimes, when you’re a guy living alone, people see you - moms, and little old people in their house robes - they see you riding your bike down the stairs, or your laundry blows onto their balcony again, and they’re like, what’s with this guy, living on his own, is he some kind of delinquent? Get married! But with you there, they’d say, what a nice young man! People always said that about you,” Bokuto finished, abstract and a little wistful. He looked up at Akaashi, who was looking down at their hands. Bokuto’s big hands covered Akaashi’s slender folded hands almost completely. They looked nice like that - his wide knuckles and blunt fingertips obscuring all but the elegant cross of Akaashi’s thumbs, so he couldn’t see the parts that were gripped white. “‘What a nice young man.’ You remember that, Akaashi?”

“Appearances are often deceiving,” Akaashi said. Bokuto thought he looked wistful, too, so he must’ve remembered. “Please tell me you don’t really ride your bike down stairs.”

“It’s a bicycle,” Bokuto chuckled, “what am I supposed to do, carry it?” The wistfulness on Akaashi’s face increased considerably. Bokuto felt the tide turning in his favor. “Anyway, it wouldn’t just be good for me, either. Living alone is cool and all, like how you can fart whenever you want and nobody tells you to stop -”

“An important consideration.”

“But then nobody’s ever saying, ‘How many spikes did you hit today? We’re all out of dish soap. I saw this funny commercial earlier. Did you take your meds? Please don’t leave your gym shorts in the hallway.’ That sort of stuff. And yeah, ok, that’s not very exciting, but it just makes you feel more like a person all the time, you know?”

“Yes,” Akaashi said. His hands loosened, incrementally. “I know.”

Bokuto felt a small thrill go through him, an anticipatory victory. Akaashi agreeing with him twice in a row made him feel like he was winning. He wormed his fingers in between Akaashi’s palms, prying them reluctantly open. “And, and, and do you still write in your notebooks? Those little notebooks you wrote in all the time in high school, yeah? You had one today, for our interview, didn’t you?”

Akaashi acknowledged this with a cautious inclination of his head. Bokuto still had his head rested on his forearms, which rested on the table. He rolled his head back and forth pleasantly, enjoying the room’s gentle sway. “Well, I don’t know if you know it was me, but you know how I always used to steal them and draw in them and leave you notes and stuff?”

“Of course I knew it was you,” Akaashi said, frowning. “No one else’s handwriting is that bad.”

“I didn’t read them or anything! You know I can’t read your kanji half the time anyway. I only wrote stuff that was important for you to remember!”

“‘Bokuto-san is great,’” Akaashi quoted, without inflection. “‘Bokuto-san is the best senpai.’”

“You remembered!” Bokuto yelled, shooting upright to meet him at eye level. When the beer lights flashed gold, he could see himself reflected in Akaashi’s glasses. Just behind them, Akaashi’s eyes were dark and wide. “See, see, see! It worked!”

“Did you have some point to make with this?” Akaashi held very still, blinking minimally, while Bokuto leaned his head this way and that, trying to get a better view of his tiny reflection. He could feel Akaashi’s shallow exhalations against his lips, light feathery brushes of breath.

“Right, my point. It was a really good, convincing point. It was. That. That I could do that again! Write and draw stuff for you! Yeah.” Pleased with having expressed his best argument, he drew back somewhat, giving himself over to his acquisition of Akaashi’s hands. The heel of Akaashi’s thumb yielded slightly to gentle pressure, then was firm. When Bokuto lifted his whole hand by the thumb, it stretched and unfurled, like a bird’s wing.

“... And?” Akaashi said after a moment. He watched Bokuto’s soft experimentation with unreadable eyes, and hands that were loose and pliable.

Bokuto glanced up at him quickly, to see if he was teasing. Then he chuckled good-naturedly to himself, amused that clever, acerbic Akaashi really needed something so simple spelled out for him. “And,” he said indulgently, lacing their fingers together to see how they fit, “you’d be at work late, or waiting for the train at that weird time of day, when the clouds are still dark but the streetlights went off already - or just thinking about your astronaut, yeah? But then you’d get out your notebook and see I drew a, an owl in it -” He paused and withdrew one hand to smudge an owlish shape into the rings of droplets that littered the table. “See?”

Akaashi turned and tilted his head, squinting, somewhat owlish himself. “I think so,” he said, in a voice that suggested he didn’t.

But Bokuto was very patient. He returned his hand to Akaashi’s and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Well, you’d see my drawing and think, ‘my awesome super-talented best friend Bokuto-san drew that!’ And it would be like another, you know, a thing you just said. Uh. Ah, tether, a tether! Another tether. To stop you getting any further away. That’s me saying I got you. I won’t let you get so lonely anymore.”

He played happily with Akaashi’s fingers for several moments, comfortably enclosed in the soft familiar press of sound - tinny music and laughing voices and food being pressed sizzlingly to the izakaya’s grill. There were people all around them, good people he knew and who liked him, and the pleasant heaviness in his stomach of having eaten, the beer casting an amber fuzz over everything. Akaashi’s hands were in his, and each of his little tests were proving they fit perfectly. And of course, there was the grand exultation of today’s perfect, glorious win.

“Hey, Akaashi,” he said finally, breaking the not-silence. “Did you see my good bump today? My chester? Do you remember? That totally kicked ass.”

“I saw,” Akaashi said, and his voice made Bokuto look up sharply. “You were in very good form.”

“Hey,” he said softly, frowning, “hey, what’s this, come on.” He disentangled their hands to bring a careful finger up to Akaashi’s cheek, pushing back one of the tears there. “It didn’t hurt all that bad, I’m ok, see? Nothing to cry about.”

Akaashi laughed once, wetly, ducking his head. “That’s a relief. Thank you for reassuring me.” It felt natural to cup his cheek, to thumb away the remaining tears. His cheek was very soft, if slightly damp. “I’m sorry. I think I’m drunk. I must be drunk, too.”

“Well, that’s ok, Akaashi, you’re allowed to be. I mean I am too, technically or whatever, but when I drink too much my nutritionist - she makes me think of you, she says -” He paused to affect a heavy sigh, an attitude of weariness with the world. “‘Well, Bokuto-san, you’re an adult, you’re allowed to make your own choices.’”

Akaashi rewarded him with another damp little laugh, a new and confusing sound. For one thing, Bokuto could probably count the number of times he’d heard Akaashi laugh aloud in high school on his single tear-stained hand. The number of times he’d cried, too. “She sounds very sensible. I’m flattered by the association.” Akaashi leaned his face into Bokuto’s palm, allowing it to bear the slight weight of him. He was still smiling, a small smile; he smiled much more frequently these days, for all that he seemed more sad. “She’s right, of course. Your choices are yours to make.”

“Right,” Bokuto said, unsure.

“Not my responsibility to mitigate,” Akaashi continued, smile fading, “or under my power to control. Only my own.”

“Totally,” Bokuto agreed, uncomprehending.

“I’d like to move in with you,” Akaashi said, and opened his eyes, dark and glinting with the slightest hint of golden refracted light.

Bokuto searched his face for any sign of a prank, but found only familiar, tired-eyed and serious Akaashi. A buoyant weightlessness swelled in his chest, like the air at the pinnacle of a spike. “Yes!” he shouted, standing abruptly, upsetting his chair with a clatter. “Yes, yes!” Everyone at the bar spun around to look at them, which made the feeling even better. He swept up Akaashi’s hands again, shaking them both up and down. “Hey, hey, hey, Akaashi!”

“Yes, we’re alright,” Akaashi said over his shoulder. “Sorry about the chair.”

Akaashi stood, to calm Bokuto down or pick up his chair or for some other inscrutable Akaashi reason. As soon as he was clear of the table, Bokuto had him in his arms. Akaashi said, “Oh,” when his feet left the floor, but obligingly hung suspended in midair while Bokuto crushed his face to his chest, laughing in his joy. Akaashi’s white sweater, which had looked woolen and scratchy, was incredibly soft. Appreciative, Bokuto nuzzled against it, and felt Akaashi’s hands meet tentatively in the lightest possible embrace around his shoulders. Bokuto held him up, and in that moment felt solidly, purely and perfectly happy, and to keep himself steady, Akaashi clung to him.


End file.
